


a rotted flower that learned to bloom

by Gale_Breeze



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Hanahaki Disease, god the name i chose for this is pretentious as fuck, half of the flower symbolism is probably wrong but whatever, have this absolute garbage that isnt formatted right at all, i wrote this at 4 in the morning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22882918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gale_Breeze/pseuds/Gale_Breeze
Summary: Byleth feels nothing.It doesn't stop the Hanahaki from ripping her to shreds, though.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	a rotted flower that learned to bloom

Hanahaki.

Jeralt said they had it.

It apparently had something to do with a magical flower that took root in their lungs, eventually growing outwards until they drowned on the flowers growing from their throat. It was a disease that came from loving somebody, truly and utterly.

They did not love Jeralt. They did not love the mercenary company. They did not love their foes.

Byleth did not love anybody. Byleth did not feel at all.

But the flower was there, the bishop insisted, it was there, but not growing. A dead cage of roots and vines wrapped in and around their lungs, a parasite that had long-since died and could never be removed or even touched.

Jeralt always looked sad when the bishop mentioned it, looked sad when he said Byleth might not have a long or lasting life.

Not that it mattered to Byleth.

It didn't get in the way. So they didn't care.

They spend the next decade in a haze. No love. No feeling. Nothing but the cut-gash-slice-stab-slash of endless combat, the red of blood and the white of bone and the dead stench of a corpse and the soft jingle of a sack of coin. Work was always there. Work always filled the void, filled the nothing where their ability to feel should have sat.

They did not feel anything about being a mercenary or a child of Jeralt. But they felt that death, killing, was the only thing that made them feel real. The only thing that left an impact on the world, the only way for a ghostly half-dead child like them to do anything of consequence.

Stories began to circulate by her tenth birthday. The Ashen Demon, a monster with nothing but dead flowers in their soul. The Ashen Demon, who felt nothing, was nothing, a ghost that slayed foes with just their presence alone. The Ashen Demon, a void where the world had meant to put a child and didn't.

Byleth heard the stories. And they felt nothing.

The Hanahaki in their lungs stayed dead. Nothing but dying weeds wrapped tight around their lungs, a husk of a flower riding in a husk of a person. A corpse in a corpse.

Time passed.

One day, Jeralt helped three nobles. Teenagers, young and beautiful in an objective way. They all looked at Byleth with wonder and need, like they were worth more than a sword in a too-cold hand. The girl in red took Byleth's hand and smiled. The boy in blue laid a kiss to their other hand. The boy in yellow smiled and rested an arm across their shoulder.

CRUNCH.

They pulled away and retreated into the woods as they heard the sound, dead weeds being pulled aside by slowly flowering new ones. The dead Hanahaki was twisted by vines, rebirthed. Without a heartbeat, without a sound echoing in their ears, they could hear the weed twisting inside them, blooming inside them.

They didn't understand. They had felt nothing. Nothing, they knew that. So... Why did those three teenagers make the Hanahaki come alive? Why was it active now? They did not know. And for the first time in their life, Byleth felt something: Fear. A question they could not answer, had no means to answer, would never be able to answer.

(sothis, the girl in her heart, the girl surrounded by too many radiant and colourful blossoms to count, stared sadly. "are you truly so blind to your own image?" the husk did not answer, surrounded by dead brown weeds.)

Golden sunflowers. Crimson camellias. Blue forget-me-nots. Three petals fell from their lips and to the ground. Different flowers, all meaning the same thing - Love. They felt like arrows from an enemy. Like a knife to her skull. Byleth set them ablaze and decided to never speak to the three ever again.

It was not to pass.

Rhea offered Jeralt and Byleth positions at her Academy, where they would be paid for their services. Her hair had red spider lilies weaved into it. Byleth didn't trust her, but the decision was out of their hands. They would teach students at the Academy, whether they wanted to or not.

Soon after, they met Hanneman and Manuela. Despite the barbs, despite the arguments, both of them wore gardenias on their coats. Gardenias, meaning secret love, showed off in public. Ironic. Despite themself, despite their inability to feel anything towards anyone, they laughed. It felt odd. They did not feel happy. Did not feel anything. And yet...

They... Spent time with the two Professors. They were... Friends. Amidst the sunflowers, camellias, and forget-me-nots, petals of arborvitae - Unchanging Friendship - joined their daily bonfire.

The Blue Lions were strange. There was Dimitri, who caused the ever-so-hated forget-me-nots. There was Dedue, a loyal man who was dedicated to his master. Felix and Sylvain, young men who put everything of themselves into their respective pursuits, who both wore lavender - Faithful - somewhere on their clothing. Ashe, so sweet and innocent, somebody who had been a criminal and gone straight. Annette, a girl with far too much energy and nothing to spend it on. Ingrid, who wore a single red spider lily on her chest.

And there was Mercedes, who wore a crown of zinnia, yellow tulips, white roses, gardenia and marigolds atop her head. Loyalty. One-Sided Love. Devotion. Secret Love. Despair and Jealousy. Byleth watched her silently, how her every action involved Annette, how she worshipped Annette, spent almost any moment not working with Annette.

"Why keep chasing her?" Byleth had asked. The fact they had asked at all shocked them. Why did they ask? It was not as if they cared at all. Not as if they were able to feel pity. So why?

Mercedes smiled sadly and placed a single red rose petal on the table. "Because I have to hope," she said, before leaving.

The words haunted Byleth for months. Time passed, and every day, another flower adds itself to her daily vomit, to her daily bonfire. Tulips. Edelweiss. Roses. Lilies. Dahlias. Bluebells. Azaleas. So many flowers. So many petals. So many that they had to throw up, to burn, to rip away all of this...

This nothing. They did not care. They didn't. They couldn't. They were incapable of caring. They didn't know how and were unable to. Even as the Hanahaki ate away at them each day, even as their father sent a bishop to give them another few gasps of air each week, even as they threw up so much love and affection, they couldn't feel a single. Fucking. Thing.

They were dying of a disease of love, and felt nothing.

And then... And then...

Jeralt fell. Jeralt fell, stabbed in the back, betrayed, deceived, and not even Sothis and the Divine Pulse could bring him back, could rewrite fate, could not, and... They felt sad. Just one tear. Just one single tear of sorrow. 

It was like the world shattered around their dead husk of a body, like the Goddess had reached down and pumped new life into the dead brown weeds that filled her soul as twenty years of feeling rushed through them in a single moment. The other flowers, the flowers of their Lions, were pushed away as a fountain of flowers flowed from her throat.

Zinnias, for Loyalty, the years they'd spent by his side. Tiger Lilies, for Wealth, all the money they had earned together as a duo. Orchids, for Enthusiasm, all the times he'd been so happy when they'd asked him questions, when they had pretended to be alive, just for him. Bluebells, for Joy. Daffodils, for Respect. Edelweiss, for Devotion. Pink carnations, so they never forgot him. Aloe, for Grief. Red tulips, for Trust. All of it glowing orange, glowing so very brightly, under the setting sun.

Jeralt laughed weakly, flowers surrounding his head like a halo. Like the stained glass windows in the cathedral of the Academy, like a Saint. "You cared that much?"

"You bastard," Byleth whispered. "You bastard. How could you do this to me?" One more flower. Just one. It was an orange lily. For hatred. He'd left them here, alone. Left them without him. They could barely eat without him reminding them, and now he was going?

Jeralt didn't respond. He was already gone.

Byleth spent the next month vomiting orange lilies at anybody who so much as spoke to them.

And then a month later, the girl in her dreams, Sothis, the girl with a throne with a billion blossoms, vanished. And it left Byleth alone in their empty field, surrounded by thousands of dead brown rotting weeds and so few truly alive flowers.

And then a month later, Edelgard tried to kill them all. Edelgard, the girl Byleth had vomited red camellias for every day, had put an axe at their throat. It hurt. It hurt so badly. They spent each day moving about their empty field, yanking out any flower that wasn't dead and rotting. But they grew back. Every day, in that empty void, the flowers kept coming back.

They hated it. They hated all of it, with so much wild fury that as the war started and raged, the Hanahaki inside their chest started to wilt and die. As Ashe defected, as Felix died, as Annette broke emotionally, as Sylvain sobbed and Ingrid screamed and Dimitri laughed at the suffering of the ghosts only he could see, Byleth hated all of it so very fucking much.

"Then you are a person," the thing that was once Dimitri growled. "To exist is to hate. You can hear them, can you not? The ghosts who still hold you prisoner force you to feel for them, don't they?"

They can. The grip of Edelgard's hand. The firm grasp Jeralt put on their shoulder. Ashe's easy laugh. Felix's self-satisfied grins. Annette's songs. It shouldn't matter. It didn't matter. But they felt it. They wanted to have the Hanahaki back, want to hurt again, wanted their petals to be so beautiful and technicolour again and not, not... Not this broken mockery. Not this.

The war ended. And it was not worth it. Too many dead. Too many burned. Byleth gripped the Divine Pulse by the throat and yanked. The Lions are a tragedy waiting to happen, and being with the Lions will only enable that. So this time... They choose the Deer.

The Deer were a mess. Experience with people let Byleth see the flaws she hadn't noticed in the Lions. Claude was waiting for a chance that would never come, Lorenz was too focused on his future to see the now, Raphael was too simple to ever be accepted as a knight, Ignatz would crumple at the first moment, Lysithea was dying and refused to admit it, Marianne was willing to be ground into the dirt if it made the people around her happy, Leonie was obsessed with a man who didn't exist except in her dreams and Hilda was so lazy she failed to see the world around her.

But.

But Byleth loved them. Loved them just the same as the Lions. Sunflowers. Freesias. Hibiscus. Hydrangeas. Morning Glory. Flowers, petals, sprouts, all of it. They hated it. They loved their students. They loved them all so fucking much, and it hurt, it HURT, to see everything play out again. The kidnappings. The death. The destruction. But her students were strong. More than anyone would ever give them credit for.

She spoke to Lysithea one morning. "You have Hanahaki, don't you, Professor?"

"Yes." There was no need to lie. It was true. Countless petals, countless flowers and weeds and vines that they'd set ablaze just to buy themselves a few extra gasps of air.

"You could have it extracted. Surely, it's not worth dying for." And like that, in eleven words, Byleth saw herself from so long ago. She would have said that, back then. The flowers weren't worth dying for. They weren't worth killing themself for. But. But they would lose them. They would lose the love they had gained, that they had felt for all of their friends and loved ones.

They could stop feeling altogether. And. And Byleth didn't want that. It was stupid but they wanted to keep feeling the hurt, the pain, because... Because what? There was no answer to that. So instead of giving Lysithea an answer, Byleth just smiled. "It is. And it will be."

And then Jeralt fell.

It was hard to even think. Events passed by, a repeat of the last, and Byleth could do nothing. So they sat down next to their father, and forced up a petal of the red camellia. Edelgard's flower. Edelgard, the girl who would burn the world. But Jeralt didn't know that. Jeralt just saw that his child, a broken husk of a thing, had finally felt something.

"You love them, okay?" he said weakly. "Promise me."

"I promise," Byleth whispered weakly.

There was no halo of flowers. No overwhelming surge of hate or love. Just a moment in the rain.

Edelgard attacked. The war raged. Marianne had killed herself three years ago. Ignatz had been forcibly enlisted in the Empire. Lorenz had betrayed them. More losses. More sorrow. The field in their soul, slowly growing back to full health, withered away into brown rotting dust. The war ended, and the enemies of Fodlan were destroyed fully. Entirely.

But too many had died to make it worth it. Byleth yanked at the Divine Pulse, felt time pull taut under their grip, and rewound. The Black Eagles this time. They'd find a way to get everyone out alive. They had to. They refused not to.

The Eagles were a mess of politics, not personalities, too much tied down in their future rather than their present. Lorenz, spread out across an entire house. Edelgard, a dreamer who wanted the future to be so very bright. Hubert, a dark shadow who still longed for the light. Ferdinand, an earnest man in an unearnest world. Linhardt, a scientist. Caspar, a warrior. Dorothea, a songstress. Petra, a warrior queen. Bernadetta, an artist.

Byleth loved them. Goddess fucking help them, they loved each and every one of their murderous little children. More flowers, again. Carnations, chrysanthemums, edelweiss, ericas, lotuses, pansies and poppies, more flowers for them to shred in her throat and vomit up. Too weak to understand how they made the flowers made them feel, just that they felt at all.

"You need help," Bernadetta whispered to them one night. "Hanahaki isn't meant to last this long." And then her fingers traced a scar down her chest, where Byleth knew her father had peeled the heliotrope flower - Eternal Love and Devotion - for her first commoner friend right of her her lungs.

"It's fine," Byleth had told her. And it was. Byleth wanted to keep the hurt, keep the feeling in her soul, even if they didn't understand it at all. Even if it was killing them deep inside.

"But what if you die?" Bernadetta asked fearfully, tearfully. "I don't want you to go."

And the answer to that Byleth found in their skull, in their heart, in the thousands of flowers growing inside their lungs was, was a peony - Happy Life. They wanted a happy life for all of their friends. "It doesn't matter if I go," Byleth said, understanding each flower as it grew and grew and grew inside them. "It just matters if all of you are happy and alive."

It had taken twelve years over two timelines with the Deer and Lions, but Byleth stood in front of Rhea and saw the truth. The flowers in Rhea's hair weren't placed there. They had grown. Red spider lilies, growing out from under her skin, the feeling of abandonment and sorrow so strong it was starting to change who Rhea was from the inside out. Rhea screamed, and the world changed.

The war raged, as it always did. The Hanahaki in their chest grew each day. And for once, nobody died. Nobody that Byleth cared about died, they were winning and theur students were all alive! Until. That was the key word.

Until.

The Lions stood opposed to them. All eight. Byleth realised they would have to kill them all.

And they refused this timeline, refused it in every way imaginable. They yanked at the Divine Pulse again, and sided with the Church. Seteth was a good man, and Flayn was a lovely young woman, but they were blind to the incarnation of loss and sorrow called Rhea, thought she looked so beautiful and graceful and. And Byleth refused that timeline too.

Divine Pulse. Fight. Work. Teach. Die. Divine Pulse. Fight. Work. Teach. Die. Divine Pulse.

On. And on. It kept going. Every reset, the Hanahaki grew stronger. Grew more intense, until it started to consume them before the war even started. But Byleth wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. They knew perfectly why the Hanahaki was growing so strong, because Byleth loved each and every one of their students too much to let a pointless war take them from them, loved them all too much to just roll over and die when the people they loved were in danger.

Reset. Reset. Reset. Reset. Reset. Failure after failure.

And then, out of the blue... Success.

The Millenium Festival was in full swing. Her students were happy, her friends were happy, there was no war and no hate. Edelgard and Dimitri laughed like old friends. Lysithea danced gleefully, her hair a beautiful shade of brown. Hubert smiled, a flower pinned to his chest by a merry Bernadetta. Everything was alive again. It all worked.

Byleth stared at the flower field in their soul. The flowers were huge, leaves sprouting and petals glowing and all of them up to their throat. They'd done it. The people they loved so much... Were alive and happy. They had happy lives. They would live. Everything was right in the world. It had only taken them a thousand years.

They silently left the festivities, and slowly moved through the place they'd lived their entire life. So many years spent in this place, so many years where they'd saved lives and helped friends through trauma and guilt. They moved up into the Goddess Tower, up to the top floor, and stared out into the clear blue horizon.

"Are you ready to go?" Sothis asked, a gentle smile on her face. Before her, a field of flowers spread out as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a man in an orange tunic and a woman with green hair waved to Byleth.

Byleth smiled weakly, time already flowing from their body. "Yeah. I think I am."

Sothis held out her hand. "You're okay with this timeline, then? No more Divine Pulses?"

"No. I'm okay with this timeline. I feel like I love it." Byleth said happily. "Feels good." And that was the truth.

After that day, the individual known as The Professor vanished from the pages of history. Though their true name was lost forever, their feats of bravery and acts of love were recorded for all of history to see. However, the night they vanished, a mysterious old woman was found resting in the Goddess Tower. Long having succumbed to Hanahaki, a garden of flowers bloomed out of her chest. Eight sunflowers, eight red camellias, eight blue forget-me-nots, and a single bittersweet.


End file.
